Tag Archives: healing

Gadarene

Posted on by
Reply

A herd of swine
may run violently down a hill.
This is not a strange occurrence —
it happens all the time,
betrayal hard on the heels of betrayal,
blame hard on the heels of blame,
all those justifications, all those
indignant and disappointing stories
following each other to their
collective destruction

What’s wonderful, and what may seem miraculous
is what remains when all the herd is gone,
the beatific peace
that was your essence all along,
ultimate justice, fruit of an act
that’s truly kind,
to sit now clothed and quiet
in your right mind.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 12, 2017

Save, or I Perish

Posted on by
Reply

As if randomly,
through some searing memories
I find myself
fallen between the ribs of normalcy,
lodged in the space between
what I thought and what I’ve come to understand
stuck in a place where I can only cry
“save, or I perish”

Part of me thinking,
are tears so bad, anyway?
Is this agony, or is it just
the stretching of my face
and of the inside of my mouth?

What carried me this far
will carry me all the way.
To the almighty, it doesn’t matter
if my salvation took a thousand years
or one day,
I am not tardy,
I am not far from home —
wait for the clearing,
for surely it will come.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 26, 2017

 

Healing

Posted on by
Reply

Yes, you will be healed.
Understand, though,
that healing will be deeper
than fixing what you diagnosed as problem,
it will be more
than setting up your life to jump through
all the perfect hoops you planned for it

There will be a great shifting,
a great melting within,
things will be smoothed
that you didn’t know were ruffled,
things will be roused and routed
that you didn’t know were there,
and in the end you’ll feel the resonance
through bone and sinew,
the sweet sustain that comes from being One.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 6, 2017

Healing the Past

Posted on by
Reply

I start my journey back
across the chasm,
all those times of disappointment,
all those hurts, all those dry years,
the places where I felt
I’d need explanations, apologies —
to tell someone the wrongs
that had been done me

I take these steps
and virgin forest
springs up around me,
familiar as something
that’s always been here,
rich with layers and layers
of interacting life.
Where is the desert,
where the wilderness?
How deep my blindness must have been
not to have seen this!
How full the healing truth must be
to bring me home!

©Wendy Mulhern
February 24, 2017

Presence Church

Posted on by
1

We come to this place
where we have agreed
that love is presence —
that if you are here
then you are loved,
and in your love is an expansive blessing,
more than we had dared to hope for.

We understand
there will be healing —
not in the sense of change
but as in coming into wholeness,
recognizing what we’ve always been.

We come to this place as refuge
from other patterns
that we have used to think about each other.
We put those aside here,
we learn not to use them,
we forget about them entirely,
caught up, as we are —
totally transfixed —
in this way of being love.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 12, 2017

Healing the Beast

Posted on by
1

The beast, wounded,
snarls and snaps.

There is a correlation
between unhappiness
and being mean. The unhappy feel
their meanness is justified —
after all, if they aren’t happy,
why do they owe thoughtfulness
to others?

The beast must be captured
with cords of understanding,
wrapped in kindness
till it can’t lash out. Slowly, then,
we can start to heal those wounds
it has inflicted on itself

It may seem more natural
to try to punish it, for all the damage
of its many incarnations,
but that is what the beast would mandate

Let us then heal
the beast within ourselves,
that our hands may be free
to bind and heal the larger, outer beast.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 1, 2017

Redemption

Posted on by
Reply

hand-and-heart

I want to tell about the way I feel,
I want to tell about how quickly
the circle of peace spread through me,
how warm and safe I felt,
how the glow reached in powerfully
to light up all the places in my past
that had been sorry,
to make them right, to fill them up with joy

I didn’t know till then that my redemption
could reach in that far,
but now I see
it had to cover everything,
had to halo everyone,
for no one can remain outside
the all-embracing Truth in which we live.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 11, 2016

Heritage

Posted on by
Reply

baxter-wetlands

They were lost for a long time
because the invader
had taken away the name of their land,
the name that had placed them,
right as moss,
in the order of everything

It had taken away their rivers,
straightened them, dredged them, drained them
to make way for logs and motors,
so they couldn’t look at them
and know their way home

Years passed. Cities rose, and generations
followed, one after another,
none of them knowing
how they were led by the neck,
how little what was offered
could touch the hidden caverns
of their need, of their potential

It was a revelation how a whisper
could resonate so loudly, could crash
so many stories, unearth so many
roots and bones and memories.
Something secret in plain sight, a code
of DNA, which all those layers of tales
couldn’t bury

It was the power for a revolution
how it spread from soul to soul
until the truth of it
rose like the dawn:
This is our name, our name
and the name of our land.
It can’t be taken from us now
for we are one
and we are whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 15, 2016

It’s Time

Posted on by
Reply

Wendy running in dunes

This is the time
to learn to stand,
to let the lies
blow away like sand.
In the end they can’t bury
what is solid, what is true,
in the end they can’t destroy
the real you

There may be dunes,
there may be drifts —
you’ve seen how often
the scene shifts.
But what you are is stronger
than sand, than wind, than time,
and what you are will triumph
and what you are will shine

There has never been a limit to your being
and there’s never been a limit to your worth,
and there’s never been a failure of your goodness,
never been a weakness in your truth

This is the time
to learn to stand still,
time to surrender
your anxious will,
time to let the winds of time reveal
who you have always been.
It’s time to heal.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 6, 2016

Progress Report

Posted on by
Reply

Mill Creek April

No lumps can stay
in the warm river of Love.

There is such a sweet laughter
when they have melted away,
when they have slid, effortlessly
into the oneness of the flow
and a look of understanding
replaces the conflicted look
of frightened defiance
masked by bravado

It’s such a simple connection
when we recognize
there’s never been a battle —
we’ve always shared the same purpose,
been carried
in the same design.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 21, 2016